Afghan prisons not ‘torture chambers,’ Canadian general testifies

OTTAWA – Afghan prisons are not "torture chambers" and the subject of detainee abuse is a water cooler "conversation killer" in the military, a senior Canadian commander told an inquiry Thursday.

Maj.-Gen. Mike Ward also praised the Afghan National Directorate of Security (NDS), the intelligence agency which operates many of the detention facilities, as far superior to Afghan police or the army in his testimony at the Military Police Complaints Commission.

Lawyers for the commission and for Amnesty International and the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association probed Ward on his knowledge of and concern about the risk of torture to Afghans who were captured by Canadians and turned over to Afghan authorities when he served at headquarters of CEFCOM, the wing of the military that oversees Canada’s international missions, in 2006 and in other roles in subsequent years.

The commission is holding public interest hearings into complaints by the human rights groups that Canadian military police failed to investigate the transfer by Canadian Forces to Afghan authorities – to prisons run by the NDS in many cases – of detainees at risk of torture.

Ward testified that he was aware of international reports by the U.S. State Department and human rights analysts about torture in Afghanistan through summaries provided for military strategy documents.

But he said his work at CEFCOM involved 18 military missions worldwide and reports about torture were "no more Afghanistan than Sudan, Congo, the Middle East, other places were we had troops conducting operations."

In the past year, when he served until last week as NATO’s deputy commander training Afghan police, Ward said he had read more and more of those reports.

He said such reports were "backgrounders" that did not contain precise allegations.

"They don’t help very much because when you create an expectation or a climate of torture or terror in Afghan prisons, it’s actually not accurate," he said. "These are not torture chambers per se."

After Ward repeatedly said the detainee torture issue was not something he dealt with, commission lawyer Nigel Marshman and Amnesty International lawyer Paul Champ wanted to know whether he had spoken to anyone about it around the water cooler.

No, he replied, because his focus was on other operational issues.

"That was normally a conversation killer at the water cooler," he added.

Asked to explain later, Ward said 99 per cent the Canadian Forces are focused on work that has nothing to do with detainees and there are experts in the military who deal with the issue.

"We certainly shed a light on something which is important, no doubt about it, and that’s why we stress this (transfer) is to be done in accordance with human rights and Geneva Conventions uppermost," he said.

"But to be honest, 95 per cent of the Armed Forces don’t focus on detainees every day. They focus on doing their jobs . . . If it’s a conversation killer at the water cooler it’s because you can’t do anything about it, you’re out there doing other things, you’re not there to address the detainee issues, they’re being looked after."